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3 notes from BookLikes Librarians - ASINs, graphic novels, your BookLikes shelf
Today BookLikes Librarians share some useful information about editing book information on BookLikes and filling up your BookLikes shelves.
1. ASINs
Some of you already noticed that when you edit the book information with ASIN (mainly Kindle ebooks) you'll probably receive "Enter correct ASIN" notification, even though the ASIN IS correct.
We're very sorry for the ongoing problem, unfortunately the issue persists so it's impossible to edit the existing book with an ASIN number directly on the site.
We can do the changes via our internal system, so if you notice that a book record needs a change or an update, please mail Kate@booklikes.com and we'll do it ASAP.
Please note that you can still update the book covers by using the green Add cover button (no need to enter the edit book form).
BookLikes Librarian Jenn from Murder by Death posted a workaround for the ASIN bug you may find helpful. Here it is:
As I mentioned in my last post here there is currently an issue with some Amazon kindle and Audible ASIN numbers being rejected by the BL database.
I might have found a workaround for users (this won't work for librarians directly because our edits don't go through the queue).
If you want to edit an ASIN kindle edition, or Audible audiobook edition and it spits out that dreaded Add correct ASIN, all you have to do is remove the ASIN number completely from the record and save it.
For the Librarians - when you see an edit request that includes removing what looks like a legit ASIN number, check to make sure it's a kindle, and then approve all the changes except the ASIN removal. It works! The record will update with all the new details and keep the ASIN number in place.
Note: this obviously does not work if you're trying to add an ASIN that BL doesn't like to a record. That's still broken - but this will at least allow you to edit existing records to add descriptions, page number, etc. without losing the ASIN.
Graphic Novels are an exception to the rule that the series name should not appear in the title for the item. The series should still be in the series field (though may necessitate an indicator since there are sometimes multiple versions of the printing, a HC collected edtion, an Omnibus, etc... that's a whole different issue).
Let's take a look at "Rat Queens, Volume 1: Sass & Sorcery".
"Sass & Sorcery" alone is not the name of the volume.
For consistency, we'd like to recommend that Volume be abbreviated to Vol.
and that numbers be indicated with digits, not spelled out.
So in this example we'd have:
Title: Rat Queens, Vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery
Series: Rat Queens
Position: 1
We would be thankful for following the rules for graphic novels and other book entries. You can check the BookLikes Book Edit Guidelines on the FAQ page. In case of any questions or concerns, please mail us or use the Report option on the book page.
3. Shelving books
Jenn from Murder by Death started a series of How to BookLikes stories that every blogger gonna find helpful. Here are some of the insights concerning the shelving issues:
How to: Shelves. Part 1 of possibly 100
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I'm going to presume everyone knows how to get to their BookLikes shelves. By default, BookLikes displays your shelves as, well, shelves. This is fine, but sometimes you need to extra power seeing your shelves in list view allows, so if you see shelves, please change the view to lists by clicking on this button:
Once you're in your list view - take a moment to check out the differences.... then click the "Settings" button on your toolbar:
This will take you to your shelf settings where you can choose things like your default view, default sort order, etc. etc. But for the purposes of this tutorial we're focusing on the shelves themselves, so scroll a bit until you get to the list of shelves towards the bottom.
What is going to follow is a giant graphic of that section with notations about each function. It just seemed the clearest way to explain all the different bits:
Notes:
Exclusive statuses - these are shelves that allow you to mark a book without also setting it as Read, Planning to Read, or Currently Reading. The best example of the usefulness of this is dictionaries . Most of the time, you don't actually read, cover to cover, a dictionary. Creating an exclusive shelf called Reference allows you to shelve it without having to mark your intention of reading it. There are many other examples of these types of books, so you can create as many exclusive shelves as you'd like. The checkbox for set as status allows you to move your shelves back and forth between exclusive and non-exclusive (in case you change your mind someday and decide to read the OED cover to cover).
click and drag - please note that older browsers and computers might struggle with this - if you think you're tech isn't a young whipper snapper any longer, use the Position numbers instead (although if you have a lot of shelves, yes, they're a pain).
I included the visible columns part of the page in the image above for two reasons. 1. It's where you can decide what to display in your list view, and 2. to highlight the multiple "Save Changes" buttons. Now, I don't know for sure but rather to be safe than sorry, use the Save Changes button that applies to each section of the settings page. So if you make changes to the table -visible columns section, use that save button. If you make changes to the exclusive statuses, use that save button.
I suspect they're all the same but the sheer number of them make me concerned that they're not. So, like I said, better safe than sorry.
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Check also BookLikes' blog post: A-Z ways to arrange your bookshelf where we share and list all options available on your Shelf , table shelf view and shelf settings.
BookLikes is a place where you can not only start your book blog and review books but also present your book collection in the most desirable way. The following bookshelf description is a reminder of numerous shelf options available on your shelf page on BookLikes.
Filling up the bookshelf page with your favorite titles is easy-peasy. What to do next? First you should answer the question which reading personality type are you, decide how you'd like to arrange your books and then read the following section with the Shelf page options on BookLikes.
1. Add a new thematic shelf - a new thematic shelf will be added to your shelf page; you can also set it as status, then it will be added under other statuses: Read, Planning to read and Currently reading.
2. A Shelf search - search your shelf, type title or author;
3. Sort option for your books - choose how to view your books;
4. Your private notes - find books with your private notes; the book with a private note receives a little dot under the cover;
5. Shelve it! - a feature that helps you shelving new books from other webpages, move the Shelve it icon to your bookmark bar and click when visiting a book pages of Amazon and other booksellers;
6 and 7 - Cover view and Table view for your Shelf - choose which one suits you better;
8 - Shelf Settings - a gateway to manage your shelves, statuses and sorting options, have a look at available options below.
Shelf settings:
There's quite a lot of things to do in here:
a. add shelf - add a new shelf, or set the shelf as an exclusive status;
b. choose the default shelves order - alphabetical or manual (then you can decide how to order your thematic shelves);
c. shelf Page view - the cover view or the table view for your admin shelf page;
d. books order - how books on your shelf should be presented (this is how you and your blog guest will see the books on your shelf);
e. visible columns - chose which columns should be visible in your table view
f. rename - change the name of your thematic shelf;
g. position - if you wish to set your shelves manually, you can choose theirs positions (write number or use the drag and drop);
h. set an existing shelf as an exclusive status;
i. delete the shelf.
Remember to Save all the changes in the particular sections to make all the updates visible on your Shelf page.
If you choose to view the table view of your shelf page,
here's what you get:
i. select one or several books, this will activate the option on the top of the table view ( see: k, l, m);
j. select all the books - you can select all the books visible on this shelf page;
k. add to shelves - add selected book(s) to your thematic shelf/shelves;
l. take books off the selected shelf - choose a thematic shelf, select the books and take them off the chosen shelf; the books will stay on your Shelf Page, only the shelves they are on will be changed;
m. delete books from your shelf - select book(s) and delete them from your shelf page; even if you delete the books from the Shelf, the review attached to this book will remain on your blog;
n. choose how many books per page in the table view to see;
o. sort options; cover - see book without a cover and add missing images to green books; Title/Author - alphabetical order; Ratings - according to your rating stars; My review - books with/without a review; Date Read - finished reading date;
p. add rating stars to your books;
q. add review, see review or edit review; the options depend whether the review is attached or not;
r. edit shelves for a given book - move or add the book to your thematic shelves;
s. add the finished reading date - remember that only books with filled up Read Date count to your reading challenge;
t. delete a book from your shelf;
u. change an edition - choose other book edition to be presented on your shelf page.
This shelf compendium covers many shelving issues, if you have any doubts or questions, please let us know in the comment section below or mail us directly.
We also encourage you to look through BookLikes blog and tag tutorials to find other tips and tricks on BookLikes.
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Feel free to write with any questions directly to the BookLikes team (mail: kate@booklikes.com). You can also post questions in the discussion groups:
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